Geographically centric web interfaces, such as Live Local (“local.live.com”) from Microsoft Corporation and Google™ Maps (“maps.google.com”) from Google, are useful to search for geographically relevant objects that represent physical places or things, such as restaurant, theatres, stores, parks, web cameras (webcams), traffic sensors, and so forth. To enable such searching, the objects are first matched to their precise locations in terms of latitude and longitude. Historically, the process is done manually and takes significant time and expense to match the objects with their locations.
As a result, there are many useful objects found on the Web that are not typically matched with their geographical locations. For example, a restaurant in the Redmond Town Center in Redmond, Wash. might position a webcam to capture the restaurant entry area. Images from the webcam may then be posted on the restaurant's webpage so that potential patrons may access the webcam online to quickly ascertain whether the restaurant is crowded. As another example, the Department of Transportation (DOT) of a city or state may publish traffic sensors on its website so that citizens can check traffic online before embarking on a drive. These objects of interests (e.g., the restaurant webcam and the traffic sensors) are not typically matched with geographically relevant information, like latitudes and longitudes. Rather, in most cases, the objects are simply made available on specific websites for users to access.
In some cases, the web pages might include a brief description of the objects. For instance, the restaurant webpage might show images from the webcam accompanied by a note “Redmond Town Center”, while the DOT's webpage may provide a descriptive note (e.g., “I-5 and I-90 Interchange”) next to the appropriate traffic sensor. While these objects are very useful and understandable in these contexts, a lack of specific geographical coordinates prevents them from being more widely used and displayed on maps by existing geo-centric web interfaces.